This week’s theme
Whose what?

This week’s words
cat's meow
patriarch's age


Wordsmith Games

🧩	Jigsaw Riddle Cure-All
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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(PAY-tree-arks ayj)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A very long time.
2. A very advanced age.

ETYMOLOGY:

From patriarch, from Greek patriarches (father or chief of a family), from patria (lineage) + -arche (ruler), + age. Earliest documented use: 1693.

NOTES:

The term is coined after biblical men who lived for hundreds of years. As with many biblical details, it depends on how broadly you use the term patriarch. Narrowly, the three main patriarchs are Abraham, his son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob, who lived 175, 180, and 147 years, respectively. Widen the family album to the antediluvian patriarchs, and Methuselah outlasts them all at 969 years. Try fitting 969 candles on a birthday cake, much less blowing them out!

USAGE:

“This bold German patriot was the very model of male beauty at a patriarch’s age. Sixty-five years had robbed neither his body nor his spirit of the freshness of youth.”
Emil Klauprecht (Translation: Dale V. Lally, Jr); Cincinnati, Or, The Mysteries of the West; Peter Lang; 1996.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: